By Andrew Cawthorne
HAVANA, Nov 1 (Reuters) - It is a far cry from your average multimillion-dollar Hollywood set, but the ramshackle old bus station on Havana's outskirts is a perfect location for Cuban cinema's latest tongue-in-cheek look at daily life on the Communist-ruled Caribbean island.
Rusting hulks of vehicles gather moss outside and peeling walls enclose a shabby waiting room. Communist propaganda exhorting domestic stringency adorns notice boards next to warnings to passengers not to spit or lean on the walls.
It could be any provincial transport depot across Cuba during the severe recession suffered since the 1990 breakup of its longtime economic sponsor, the Soviet Union. But this is in fact an old casino, abandoned for 40 years after the 1959 Cuban Revolution, then made into a bus terminal to film
``Lista de Espera'' (''Waiting List''), the latest offering from Cuba's well-rated if cash-strapped film industry.
The new comedy, like recent internationally acclaimed predecessors such as ``Fresa y Chocolate'' (''Strawberry and Chocolate'') and ``Guantanamera,'' promises to be another gritty but affectionate portrait of daily hardships here.
SOCIAL SATIRE TOUCHES NERVES
Due to be released in early 2000, it follows a group of Cubans' interminable wait for public transport -- a familiar problem for most of the island's 11 million inhabitants -- and the ensuing personal dynamics that develop between them.
The biggest audience draw will be the reuniting of two of Cuba's best-known cinema stars, Jorge Perugorria and Vladimir Cruz, for the first time since the Oscar-nominated ``Strawberry and Chocolate.''
``Waiting List'' is sure to touch some raw nerves by mocking Cuba's inadequate transport system, but its makers are eager to stress it is just as much human drama as social satire.
``It's an optimistic story, a hopeful story, a film which proposes, among other things, that problems can only be resolved in a collective way, not an individual way. ... Solidarity over rivalry,'' director Juan Carlos Tabio said during a break in filming on the set.
That is a familiar message of sorts in a nation that has vehemently preached socialist solidarity ever since rebel chief Fidel Castro came down from the hills to take power in 1959.
Tabio, one of Cuba's top directors, co-directed ``Strawberry and Chocolate'' in 1993 and ``Guantanamera'' in 1994 with the late Tomas ``Titon'' Gutierrez Alea, the dominant figure of local cinema for decades until his 1996 death.
The 1993 film, the story of a gay artist's friendship with a Communist youth, was considered a bold venture by Cuba's state-supervised cinema industry and won wide plaudits abroad.
``Guantanamera'' satirised both state bureaucracy and transport problems in a hilarious but telling portrait of one family's ordeal bringing a dead relative's corpse from one side of the island to the other for burial.
The film, named after a popular Cuban song about a girl from Guantanamo province, was well-received by moviegoers at home and abroad but may have cut too close to the bone, prompting a public rebuke from Castro in a 1998 speech.
His comments annoyed artists and intellectuals on the island and, in a highly unusual move, the president partially retracted them in a private meeting. Not surprisingly, it is hard to get a copy of the film in Cuba now.
SMILES AMID BITTERNESS
Perogurria, who acted in both films, said the new movie, ``Waiting List,'' was an attempt not to stir political controversy but to ease Cubans' daily lot.
``Our aim is that after people see the film, when they find themselves again in a situation against their will like this, it should be less painful. At least they can say 'This reminds me of the film' and smile amid the bitterness,'' he said.
``I believe that if cinema helps us to live a bit, we'll have achieved a fair amount. Because through cinema you can't do much more. If you want to change a nation, you have to make a revolution, but we make films.''
Defenders of the local movie sector, controlled by the state's Cuban Institute for Art and Cinema Industry (ICAIC), say it has a vigorous tradition of social criticism and independent thought since its foundation months after Castro's revolution.
They point, for example, to the late director Gutierrez's acclaimed 1966 movie, ``La Muerte de un Burocrata'' (''The Death of a Bureaucrat''), which satirises officialdom. From then until now, ``Cuban cinema has insisted on its vocation of tackling Cuban reality in a reflective, critical way
that encourages thought and also tries to move people,'' Tabio said.
Critics, particularly foreign opponents of Castro and the ruling Communist Party, argue the Cuban cinema industry is inevitably muzzled to a certain extent by state control. But movie industry analysts recognise that local films push back the thresholds in a closely controlled society.
``The perception outside Cuba is that cinema, with music perhaps, is the most liberal and least censored of media coming out of Cuba,'' Latin American film and television expert Andrew Paxman said. But he noted that, for all the social irony, Cuban films never touch ``the biggest question'' --
Castro himself.
Cuban actor Carlos Cruz, who played a state bureaucrat in ``Guantanamera,'' painted a grim picture of the local film sector after announcing his decision to seek political asylum in the United States during a trip to Miami this month.
In an interview with the anti-Castro newspaper El Nuevo Herald, Cruz said artists in Cuba were abysmally paid and under constant pressure from authorities.
``There are dozens of Cuban artists living in deplorable conditions, physically weakened,'' he said, giving as an example his $300 earnings from a leading role in ``Guantanamera.''
``Cuban cinema is under enormous official pressure. People are afraid of reawakening The Customer's anger with a critical film,'' Cruz said, using a joking name for Castro. (''He is 'El Cliente' because he is always right,'' the joke goes).
OVERCOMING CENSORSHIP
Perogurria, a friend and colleague of Cruz, defended Cuban cinema's ``social commitment'' but, with a candor permissible in public here perhaps only for someone of his status, he admitted artists have sometimes had to struggle against censorship.
``Cuban cinema is not a cinema which deceives anyone, it's a cinema where people see themselves well-reflected. That doesn't mean that in Cuba there are no films which have been censored, that it has not been difficult for some creator to put a project into practice -- impossible at times,'' he
said.
``All that has been true. As Titon said, 'Censorship exists, as it exists in any other place,' but for me the merit is in the quality and talent of the creator to be able to overcome that censorship, and that has been possible here.''
Over and above politics, the Cuban cinema industry maintains a healthy reputation for producing consistently good films under difficult economic circumstances.
``Historically, Cuba has always had a special place in Latin American cinema because, despite its small number of productions, it has maintained a consistently good-quality body of film,'' said Paxman, who is also a former Latin American editor for Hollywood-based Variety magazine.
He added, however, that the success of ``Strawberry and Chocolate'' had not really been repeated. Cuba's most recent high-profile film, ``La Vida es Silbar'' (''Life is Whistling''), took the main prize at the prestigious annual Havana Film Festival in December 1998 but had a mixed reception
abroad.
Since Cuba plunged into recession with the Soviet collapse, the ICAIC has increasingly had to look outside for financing, resulting in co-productions, especially with Spain. ``Waiting List,'' for example, with a budget of about $1.5 million, has Spanish, French and Mexican involvement.
21:18 11-01-99
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